I think you're missing my point here. If the power consumption is so high that when you are watching a video the battery runs down after an hour of use the device then becomes useless for the other task you want to use it for.
if that's indeed the case then the device will most likely not meet its 'a-ok' status with me (even though i seldom watch videos on my handhelds for hours on). as of now we don't know how it fares there, though.
OpenCL is an interresting development, however it is also designed to run on GPUs so there is no inherent advantage to having a "sea of CPUs" vs a GPU with a sea of shaders, in fact the GPU has the advantage that it will also run graphics work loads (a lot) faster with less power consumption.
well, i never said the classic GPU does not hold the speed and/or efficiency crown at graphics. all i said was that if it only does that then it'd have less value to me than something else that does graphics not so well, but which is also usable in a bunch of other task domains. as re OpenCL, while it has clear provisions for GPUs, it does not limit itself to GPUs only.
regardless, i'd be very interested in a handheld that features OpenCL. i'm not seeing one coming, though. for instance, apple, the big adopter of the API, are quite stingent when it comes to fully exposing the programmable features of their beautiful fenced garden (vertex shaders on the VGP, anybody?). i'd love to be proven wrong, though.
Incedentally there is no proof that this partuicular device will enable you to do any of the tasks you think you want to do with it any better than any other device (which is why I think you're jumping the gun!).
it may just as well seem from aside that i'm jumping the gun, but from my perspective i'm just hopeful that they (creative) may be actually taking steps in the general direction i think these devices will move on in the future. IOW, i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. i'll also be checking that first-hand as i've pre-ordered their SDK kit.
The correct question here is at what point do you think these machines met the bar for being "just enough for your routine" and how do you think that compares to the power of something like an iPhone or iPhone GS?
i'm taking you're asking me how i see the power of devices like the iphone in the context of their daily use?
i find them fairly adequate power-wise (the GS clearly more so. when it comes to graphics, at least). it's what tasks i can (respectively, cannot) use them for that bothers me. that latter is usually a resuilt of the platform's hardware *and* software features and policies, of course. or from a dev's perspective, it's the hardware and its 'de-facto' programmable features.
as it stands, the iphone GS' fairly-power-adequate GPU currently gives me a fancy GUI (which the the old MBX does almost as well), and the odd es2-tailored game (not yet, but any time now). it also allows me to do es2.x R&D, but for that i have to be sitting at my desk, with the device hooked to my desktop - nothing mobile there - for the purpose i could just as well use an emulator. and when you think of it, its transistor budget is comparable to the device's CPU. so why am i carrying all those transitors around, when i could be carrying an equal, but more useful bunch of them?
Alternatively why should we settle for things being merely adequate?
why shouldn't we? i find the adequacy criterion quite practical. we're not talking art or sports here, we're talking use and function.
